What an HIV Vaccine Should Be

The concept of an effective HIV vaccination is a difficult theory to comprehend. The fact is that a viable vaccine would have to introduce enough of the disease for the body to create antibodies for it. The issue is that even when a person has full-blown AIDS the body can’t put up any kind of defense. So how to get the body to protect itself against a disease that fights the immune system? That is the difficult challenge that faces researchers who have dedicated themselves to finding a vaccine for HIV.

Researchers are working on such a strategy right now using antibodies from the blood of the rare individuals whose bodies have managed to create some of these elusive antibodies. The idea is to find a way to create antibodies for any person based off of the antibodies of these special few.

The researchers have observed and attempted to reverse engineer the process by which the bodies of these special individuals are able to create effective antibodies. It is hoped that the molecules they have observed at the onset of the antibody creation are the key to an effective vaccine.

While these findings may not directly result in a viable vaccination for HIV, it is clearly a big advancement in what has been a long and frustrating search. Millions upon millions of dollars have been heaped into research over the past several decades, and yet very few strides in the right direction have been taken. Thus, any glimmer of hope is still clung to by researchers.

Since the molecule worked as expected in a test tube setting, animal testing is next. If the molecule can get the bodies of animals to consistently make HIV antibodies, then it can progress to the human testing stage. Years, of course, will go by as the studies continue on.